Cold War Reset? Russia Getting Irked With U.S.

A private U.S. non-governmental organization has spent over $4 million aiding groups unfriendly to Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has had enough.

In Russia, it is starting to look more like a Cold War reset than the modern political and economic reset Russia and the United States have been trying for over the last several years.

This weekend, newswires from the Associated Press to the AFP reported that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Sergei Lavrov, said Washington was “interfering” in local politics. The report was based on a statement published on Saturday by a Ministry spokesman named Alexander Lukashevicha about his counterpart in the U.S. State Department, Victoria Nuland.

The beleaguered U.S.-Russia reset went into high gear in the fall of 2011. Then, during Parliamentary elections that saw Putin’s United Russia party lose seats, but still dominate the decision making power, a U.S. funded electoral rights foundation called GOLOS Association charged that the elections were rigged; some small opposition parties could not get on the ballot.